Need to Make some Progress with Pilgrim

I'd love to be reviewing Scott Pilgrim vs The World right now, but even though I went to see the movie yesterday, I can't.

We got to the Cineplex-Odeon Silver City Riverport just fine, got the tickets, managed to get some good seats, and had a good crowd in the theatre. The problem was with the cinema's attempt to project the movie itself. Things were moving along well enough for the first half of the film when the sound suddenly cut out for about a minute. A real pain in the ass for any flick, but nothing that can't be put aside if the rest of the movie runs smoothly. The problem is, it didn't. The sound cut out again - permanently! - right as the final battle got under way. Howls of frustration from the audience turned into a march on the ticketing desk in the lobby involving pretty much everyone in the theatre. Of course, in true Canadian style, we were a polite angry mob. Firm in our desire to get restitution for our cinematic frustration, but polite when speaking to the staff, and orderly in lining up.

I'll give the theatre managers credit though. They were happy to provide two free passes to each person in the audience. So, some other night this week, my wife and I will be heading back to the theatre to rewatch Scott Pilgrim - hopefully this time all the way through without interruption (no decisions yet though on which film we'll see with the second spare tickets each of us have).

And I guess that's the real test of how good a movie it is. With only a week's turnaround time, we're prepared to go and sit through the bulk of the movie again just to see the ending we missed. So, wiithout doing a formal review, I can say: so far, so good.

The question that nags me about this whole experience though, is of all the movies we've seen at this particular theatre, why do they only have technical problems like this with SF flicks? In addition to yesterday's experience, there was a sound drop-out for about a minute or so during Ironman 2 earlier this summer (resulting in 1 free pass each - used to see Predators), and several years ago, a fault that totally prevented the first matinee screening of LOTR The Return of the King. The LOTR incident was really FUBAR because they'd managed to screen all the static-shot trivia bits and advertisements, then all of the opening commercials and previews, and then the projector died when it was time for LOTR to begin, and management refused to move us to another theatre in the complex to see it (although they eventually offered a single free pass to everyone, and I was able to zip across town to a smaller theatre that was just about to screen its first showing). I've never seen nerds so close to rioting (no BS, the place was turning into a powderkeg) like I did that day. Ah well, law of averages, I guess: see enough movies with no glitches, sooner or later something'll go wrong. At least the management usually does the right thing.